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vista on a t60 not ready for prime time

I’m being daring. While I’m reading articles for a paper that’s due yesterday, I’ve installed Microsoft Vista on this here Thinkpad T60 (2007-75U). A lot doesn’t work — most of the device drivers and utility programs fail to start up. I can live without things like Rescue and Recovery, or the fingerprint scanner driver for the time being. I also didn’t mind uninstalling Sonic DLA.

There are also released/beta drivers for the modem (combined 32/64 bit version), the UltraNav (32 & 64 bit versions, though I’m not brave enough to go 64-bit yet), the hard drive Active protection System (32 & 64 bit versions) and the ATI x1400 video (though I recommend getting ATI’s updated 32 or 64 bit version instead).
But I’m especially upset that the hotkeys, which were working fine with the Vista beta driver (which is extremely well hidden!) suddenly have decided to stop working. The “On Screen Display” service (TPHKSVC) won’t start, claiming “Error 1075: The dependency service does not exist or has been marked for deletion.” Of course, the Dependencies tab for that service shows no dependencies. Nothing useful is in the System log, either. Grumble.

On further inspection, there is event 7030: “The On Screen Display service is marked as an interactive service. However, the system is configured to not allow interactive services. This service may not function properly.” This looks like it’s related to security fixes for session 0 isolation pushed through in Vista. Still, it was working for a time under vista, so I think this is a red herring of some sort.

There’s also no appropriate power management support, so Vista is sucking up batteries like there’s no tomorrow, even with screen brightness at its lowest level. Good news: Lenovo/IBM released a beta driver. Bad news: the driver’s no longer available (at least, not under document ID MIGR-66919, nor anywhere else I can find. Did anyone cache a copy of the download before Lenovo/IBM pulled it?) Fortunately I’m tethered for the next few days.

Hopefully when the official Vista drivers show up in the next 6 weeks, things will be a lot smoother. Right now it feels like I’m running OS/2 2.0 again, and living with limited functionality at the expense of a prettier/better user interface.

2 thoughts on “vista on a t60 not ready for prime time”

I can’t believe Lenovo, only one 1600×1400 model ? I’m supposed to pick up a new laptop for work, and the Core 2 is appealing, but I’m spoiled by the screen on my T43p (2687M8U).
I guess 1680×1050 on the wide-screen model isn’t too bad, especially since the 2GHz/4MB version fits my budget :) Seems like a damned shame to run vista on it though :-P